Butterflies Effect
by Geuse
Summary: Weiss struggled to understand how she'd fallen for him in such short time. The infatuation, the flusteredness, the uncertainty was killing her; it was inescapable, and all because of that idiot boy. The only thing keeping her together was the hope that it was different, the other way around in another universe where he was in... love with her? Surely?
1. Yoghurt and Regrets

**/ - **I'm kind of so-so on this story, but I thought I may as well publish the first bit instead of letting it rot in my documents. I aim to finish it. Hope you like it.

* * *

Beacon's canteen was a cloaking cold, like an ice liquor, and so vast that no number of radiators would nurse the situation. It was, however, beautifully quiet on a Saturday evening, open until midnight, and housed a near limitless supply of a certain treasured delicacy; yoghurt. It made sense then that Beacon's local heiress - who was currently having a meltdown - could be found residing in the corner with a notebook, textbook, scroll, and pile of discarded yoghurts infront of her.

Her two accomplices, a napalm blonde and contrastingly reserved faunus, sat opposite her, each taking in Weiss' newly born suffering to different degrees.

"Y'know, I could sell this scoop to a newspaper - I'd be rich in twenty-four hours." Yang looked at her partner, who was lost in her paperback. She considered her outrageous plan, and thought that two minds could be better than one - so she proposed an offer to her. "Listen, if you write it down for me, I'll split the royalties fifty-fifty. Promise."

Blake, who had only taken notice when Yang jabbed her with her elbow, glanced at her incredulously. "What are you talking about?"

"Weiss' misadventure. Selling it to a paper." Yang's expression dropped with disappointment at the girl's lack of enthusiasm. "Don't you think that's a good idea?"

Blake shook her head and returned to her book, she was quick in her response. "No, it's a terrible idea; no-one's going to buy your story."

Well, she could have brought Yang down gently, who groaned, and with Blake's disapproval, threw the idea out of the window. "Whatever." She stretched in her seat. "You'll be sorry when I am the _second _richest girl in Beacon."

Weiss scribbled across her page, catching on to who she was talking about near immediately. "You overestimate how rich I am, Yang."

She narrowed her eyes in disbelief. "Your dad's a billionaire, Weiss. I do not think it's possible to overestimate how rich you are."

Weiss reached for her eraser and rid of something from the page. "That doesn't make _me _rich, it makes the family rich. But that's not to say it's _my _money."

Yang nodded. "Okay, what's your monthly allowance?"

Weiss shrugged. "Circa ten-thousand lien."

Yang wheezed a laugh in shock, and even Blake looked up from her book. The blonde turned to her partner. "Don't worry, Blake, she's not _that _rich. It's only _around_ ten-thousand!"

Blake squinted at Weiss, who was still focused on her homework and writing madly. A new book had caught her eye in that bookstore... "Can I have some?"

Yang laughed as Weiss frowned. "No, it's mine."

Blake glanced at Yang in humour, and returned to her book. "Alright." Yang announced. "How about I blackmail you instead?"

Weiss' pencil nearly snapped. "You are not blackmailing me."

Yang shrugged. "Uh, yeah, I am." She leaned forward. "Give me five-hundred, or _everyone_ knows about your little thing for Jaune."

Weiss only glared through Yang in response, and dismissed her with a single word. "No."

Her blackmailer was taken aback. "Wha-... why?"

"Because no one will believe you, nor will they care."

"I care."

Weiss took her attention away from her homework. "That's because you were laughing at me, and find it hilarious." _'__Which it isn't__'_. "No one else will, and so won't care."

Yang gestured at Blake. "She cares."

"Not particularly." Blake muttered.

Her partner thinned her lips in frustration. "Do you want free money, or not?"

"I don't believe in blackmail, Yang. It's immoral."

"Why don't you just support me? This once."

Blake only shrugged and hummed a noise of indecision, turning the page in her book. "What even happened with Weiss?"

"Have you not been listening?"

"Not really."

Yang smirked. "Two things, the most important of which is that Weiss admitted - _admitted - _to me, that she's got it for Arc."

Weiss kept her cool as the urge for yet another yoghurt built. "I did not."

"Did too."

"Did not." Weiss snarled. "I made a purely platonic comment, and you took it out of proportion. As always."

* * *

_"Does Jaune go to the gym?"_

_"Why?"_

_"Well, he's got a good frame, don't you think?"_

_"Uh."_

_"Like, what do you think he looks... under his shirt. Do you think he goes to the gym?"_

_"Pfft..."_

* * *

Blake raised an eyebrow. Just this once, she would support Yang and be hyperbolic, and _pretend_, that it was really, very quite bad. "That's not..." She shook her head and returned to her book for the something time, holding a smile back in her roleplay. "Weiss..."

Inside, Weiss had been betting her confidence in herself on Blake's opinion, and her seemingly pitiful look shot the heiress down from her high-horse. On top of her comment, Friday lesson two had been a bit of a disaster, with the whole pen-exploding-getting-covered-in-ink debacle, and standing up and leaving halfway through a conversation with Jaune because she lost her train of thought. It wasn't her fault that Jaune was _somewhat_ dreamy, she was having an off-day that Friday, is all.

Though, Blake's words meant she would have to reconsider... "What? Do you think that's bad?" She sounded desparate now, and Yang's grin wasn't helping. "It was just a compliment."

Yang chuckled. "You have it bad, Weiss. You don't just casually say something like that."

Weiss thinned her lips in a frown, sighing in frustration. This was just bad luck, maybe she had looked at him from a good angle, or maybe she was assuming good things about him that weren't true! "It was just a coincidence."

"How was that a coincidence?"

Coincidence had been the wrong word. That wasn't right. "Uh." She shook her head, and scrambled for a rebuttal. "Listen, I'm sure, somewhere, there's a parallel universe where it's the other way round. So just give me a pass."

Yang looked at Blake in disbelief and cackled. "Sorry, of course. I'll let you off this once because of this parallel-universe-Weiss, who _Jau__ne _chases after instead?" She shook her head. "I know he's a bit of a doofus in _this_ universe, but come on Weiss."

"I don't chase after him."

"You seemed pretty eager to speak to him yesterday."

"He was sitting next to me, that's not a chase." Weiss stood up, grabbing a lien note from inside her textbook. "That's normal etiquette, I was making conversation."

"Well it didn't take long for you to destroy it." Weiss didn't respond to Yang's mockery, instead turning away. "Where do you think you're off to?"

"I'm getting another yoghurt. You're making me stressed."

"Can you get me a pretzel?"

"They don't do pretzels."

"They do, they keep them in the back of the deli, just ask for one."

Weiss huffed, hoping to be diplomatic and ease tensions between the two, she appeased Yang. "Give me the money, I'm not paying."

Yang took her bag and fished a note from it, slamming it into Weiss' open hand in jest. "Thank you, darling."

"Don't call me that."

Blake chuckled. "Yeah, come on Yang, that's a Jaune exclusive."

Yang burst out laughing at her partner's input, which only infuriated Weiss further.

"Very funny, Blake." And with that, it was time for yet another blueberry yoghurt. The girl stormed off calmly, and once out of range, Yang turned to her partner.

"Does Weiss have a diary?"

Blake narrowed her eyes in thought. "Uh..." She was pretty certain she'd seen Weiss writing in one a few times in their dorm. "Yes."

Yang smiled. "What do you think it's like?"

The faunus girl glanced at Yang in caution. "I don't want to think about it."

"Yeah, but, if you had to."

"If I had to what?"

"Think about it! I bet it's full of weird stuff."

Blake turned a page. "It's probably just a normal diary, with dates and plans." She dismissed Yang's insistence. "If you're picturing obsessive scrawls and hearts, you might be thinking too far ahead. This is Weiss we're talking about."

The firecracker shrugged, resting her head on the table. "You never know. Who knows what goes through her brain."

* * *

_'Dust, was it a pretzel or a bagel she wanted?'_

Unfortunately for Weiss, her thoughts had been scattered on someone other than Yang on her walk over to the counter, and had failed to recall what she had... 'ordered'. She now only had the short time of waiting in the two person length queue to make a decision, a fifty-percent chance of success, a fifty-percent chance of failure. Her odds were evens.

Was Yang more of a bagel or pretzel person? What was a bagel again? It was a plain donut, or something, right? No, Yang wouldn't have something like that, too boring; not adventurous enough for someone like her.

...

No, that's what Jau- _Yang_ would want her to think. She'd prefer the understandable delicacy, bagels were flexible, they could take anything. Pretzels were salty, they were an acquired taste, not to be enjoyed with jam, or cream cheese. Mind you, Weiss had never had a pretzel, so she was only guessing.

...

Should she get one for Jaune? It would be an icebreaker after her disastrous conversation with him, she could save it for him as a present. He would be a bagel person, for sure, he was too much of a cinnamon roll to want a pretzel.

...

What was she thinking? She couldn't get him something from the delicatessen, what a joke of a gift; he deserved something pricier, that had thought behind it.

...

Forget about Jaune, for one moment! Just focus on getting Yang her food, then she could go and... sleep, hide from everyone else.

Grief, don't ruin this as well, Weiss.

* * *

The next morning, Weiss was awoken by the screech of an alarm. The floaty pilllow that sat over her head blocked her view, but failed to numb the auditory trauma of the cursed thing. She reached instinctively for her scroll, and slammed the screen with a finger - a guaranteed way to hit the dismiss button. Ruby, who slept above her, was already awake and dressed, her legs dangling over the edge of her bunk, and coming close to kicking Weiss in the face as she sat up.

She reached out, blocking the swinging pair of legs. "Ruby." She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "Can you move your legs to somewhere where they are not a risk to my health and safety?"

The legs moved from their position and disappeared onto Ruby's bed. In their place, came an upside down Ruby. "Morning, Weiss." Her insufferable partner beamed.

Weiss grimaced. "Good morning, Ruby." She threw her duvet off herself. "Move."

Ruby sighed, swinging herself back up onto her bed, and stretching across it. She jumped the gun on her question of the day. "What happened with you and Jaune? On Friday?"

Really? It was too early in the morning to answer a question like that. "Nothing happened."

"Come on, why won't you tell me? We're partners!" She slumped, taking out her scroll. "Yang was teasing me about it all day yesterday."

Oh, thank you very much, Yang. Weiss presumed that was her revenge after she bought her a bagel, not a pretzel, like she had apparently asked for. "Because it's none of your business."

"So... something did happen?"

Weiss made an agitated groan, rummaging through her dorm bag to find a towel and fresh clothes. "It's not for you to know-"

"You want me to tell you, Rubes?" Yang smiled, turning over in her bed.

"Yeah. I hate being out of the loop." She brightened at her sister's benevolence.

Weiss pulled her shampoo from her bag. "Don't, Yang. Get dressed, do something else."

The girl shrugged. "I'm having a lie-in today." She rested her head into her pillow in thought. "Weiss made the crudest, most over-the-line sex joke _straight _to his face."

Ruby grimaced. "Ew, Weiss, gross."

Weiss huffed, clambering her items into her arms. "She's joking, Ruby! I didn't do anything like that."

The somewhat-redhead slumped, crushed by her sister's disloyalty. "Can someone tell me what happened?" She looked across the room to Yang and Blake's bunkbed. "Blake?"

"Blake's asleep."

Ruby only sighed, returning to the game on her scroll and playing sulk for the next foreseeable ten minutes. "You wanna play something later, Weiss?"

"No." Weiss, in her frustration, headed straight for the shower.

She was going to need a miracle to get through today.

* * *

To whatever deity had been watching her, there was clearly a disagreement between how they each understood what a 'miracle' was. Now, as she sat in JNPR's dorm during an impromptu RWBY-JNPR get-together, she had grown to curse her guardian angel, and wanted her non-miracle sleepy Sunday back.

Nora and Yang were arm-wrestling, Ruby and Pyrrha were duking it out on the room's games console, Blake and Ren had some reading circle going, Jaune was busy hauling stuff to and fro the dorm kitchen. Weiss was sitting on a bed, (non-alcoholic) drink in hand, missing her own bed and her music playlist.

"Want a biscuit?" A muffled voice asked, a drooped open packet of chocolate biscuits appearing infront of her.

She looked up to find Jaune indulging himself on chocolate, mouth half full. The pumpy muscle thingy in her chest picked up the tempo. "No, thank you."

He shrugged, sitting down next to her. He sat in silence for a moment, finishing his chocolate biscuit before speaking. "Ruby told me you were upset about something."

Oh, thank you Ruby. "Upset?" She played ignorance, flattening out her skirt to relieve her nerves. "I don't know what she's talking about."

Jaune hummed, taking another biscuit from the packet. He jumped to the point. "Y'know, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake every now and then." He continued. "I've screwed up speaking to someon-"

She sighed. "I'm not bothered about Friday." Flawless delivery, Weiss, as always-bar-Friday-lesson-two.

There was a silence, and Jaune was taken aback slightly. "Oh." He bit down on his biscuit. "You're not?"

"No." A crumb of oat fell next to her. She grimaced. "Can you stop eating those?"

Jaune swallowed the biscuit quickly, nearly choking. "Sorry. Do you want one?" He offered the open packet to her again.

Weiss frowned, taking a breath. "No, just don't eat with your mouth open. It's rude."

Jaune's eyes flashed with realisation. "Right. Yeah." There was a pause. "I think Yang wants to speak to you."

"Why?"

"She's doing finger guns at you." He pointed at her with his biscuit packet in hand. Weiss found that he was infact telling the truth, as Yang was now situated on a bed at the opposite side of the room, with that stupid grin on her face, pulling finger guns like a desparado.

"Ignore her." Weiss muttered, grinding her teeth. _'__Small talk, Weiss. Say something.'_

"So-"

"Did you know the canteen sells pretzels?" Jaune asked, cutting off Weiss' advance unknowingly. "I had no idea, but someone infront of me asked for one when I was there earlier today." Against Weiss' previous advice, he took yet another biscuit from the packet. "Man, I love pretzels."

In her haste, Weiss spoke without thinking. "I thought you more as a bagel person."

Jaune glanced at her, biscuit held in place. "Why?"

Weiss' eyes widened as she acknowledged the tangle she'd gotten herself into. "Uh." _'Confidence...' _"Well, I think you're too sweet for a pretzel." Their conversation went silent again, though she was fortunate enough that the dorm was so loud no one else had heard it. Weiss was sure she had turned a blanched red now.

Once a moment had passed, Jaune laughed heartily, biting another piece from his biscuit. "That was actually pretty funny." He chuckled. "I didn't think of you as a comedian."

_'Funny? How was that funny? How was that a joke?' _"Yes..." In an attempt to cope with her circumstance, she sought something sweet. Luckily, Jaune had a packet of biscuits with him, so she snatched them out of his hand.

"Hey!-" He looked at her in surprise, his shoulders slumping. "So you did want one. You could've just asked."

Weiss frowned at the boy in kempt fury. "You kept eating and talking. They're mine now." She took one from the packet, and took a bite. Oh, sugar. Thank Remnant. "You can have them, over my dead body."

He narrowed his eyes. "There's like, five other packets in the kitchen. They came in a pack of six."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." Well, she supposed that took the impact out of her claim on the biscuits.

"Why would you eat biscuits over someone's dead body anyway?" He pondered. "Isn't that disrespectful? All the crumbs would go in the coffin."

She stop chewing and swallowed the bitten piece of biscuit in frustration, looking at the boy in incredulous disbelief. He was joking. "You're joking, aren't you?" There was no way he could be such an idiot... endearing idiot.

Jaune raised an eyebrow. "Uh?"

"It's a saying, Jaune."

He huffed. "Yeah, I know _tha__t. _But don't you think the meaning's... stupid?"

In her moment of thought, she realised they were both having a stupid conversation about a stupid thing. And it gave her a warm tumbling in her chest. "No, it means as in... 'you can have this thing, when I'm dead'... not as in you can have it _literally _over me when I'm... being buried."

Jaune made a hum of understanding. "Oh, right." He nodded. "Well, I'm gonna get another packet."

"You-!" Weiss blurted out, her already high-pitch voice breaking slightly. She coughed, settling herself to not look like a desparate loner. "You can have some of mine." In other words, 'please stay on this rickety bed with me and eat chocolate biscuits, while we talk about stupid things'.

She jabbed the open packet of biscuits at him, imploring her offer. Fortunately, Jaune captiulated and took a new biscuit, sitting back down next to her. "As you wish."

Jaune spiralled off into another subject, blabbering away. In her second of thought, Weiss reflected on the moment, and considered it a miracle.

* * *

The two had been speaking for an unrecallable while now, though between the different topics and changing tides of speech, Weiss had failed to take the conversation somewhere more... _intimate? _No... personal, more... less about arbitrary things!

They were now rating teachers from worst to best. Weiss leaned against the headboard of the bed, her legs crossed as she played with the strap on one of her boots - unbuttoning, buttoning, unbuttoning, buttoning. She had ran out of lemonade, but it had done well to calm her nerves - though that could have been her exhaustion.

"I don't think Oobleck is so bad." The tired boy began.

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "I feel like a speed camera in his classes." She unbuttoned the strap on her boot again.

Jaune shrugged. "Well, the key is to not keep up with him, and just learn the stuff from the homework."

"And how much do you know about Remnant's history?"

He thought for a moment. "Not very much."

She shook her head, smiling. "I can see it's worked very well for you, then."

Jaune pursed his lips in embarrassment. "Yeah..."

Weiss rested her head against the cold wall, tilting it to the side in her sleepy stupor. She sat there for a moment, laxly admiring Jaune's profile; his golden hair, his ocean eyes, his honed jaw. She had planned to say something, a throwaway comment; a loose compliment that just happened to come to her mind, that she would say quickly and try to forget about.

She was making herself flustered, thinking about what she was thinking about - what had happened to her? To her dismay, a bumbling rose had different ideas, and came to land inbetween the two with a jump.

"Hey, you two. Enjoying the party?" She beamed. Weiss, whose view was now blocked, was no longer enjoying the party.

Jaune smiled, flopping back onto the bed and holding himself up with his arms. "Yeah." He looked at Ruby in uncertainty. "So... when can we all go to sleep? Sunday night isn't a good time for this."

The girl shrugged. "I dunno, Yang's gonna finish her game with Pyrrha, then..." She shrugged again and yawned. "Blake's already gone back to our dorm. I might too." She kicked her legs over the edge of the bed. "Pyrrha's got a real knack for fighting games."

"We play sometimes, after sparring."

Ruby looked at Weiss, then turned back to Jaune. "You think you could convince Weiss to play a game with me?"

Weiss interrupted the exchange before Jaune could say anything. "I'm not playing one of your games, Ruby. You should spend your time on something better."

Ruby scoffed playfully. "You're always so uptight, Weiss."

"It's called being sensible; we are huntresses in training, after all."

Just as Weiss thought she had won the argument, and that Ruby's tiredness would soon consume the girl whole, the rose perked up again as her new idea burned in her eyes. This wasn't going to be good. "I know! Jaune can teach you how to play _a _game, and then you'll be able to play with me. That way, I'll still be sensible because it's not _me _teaching you."

It was good to know Ruby had missed Weiss' point entirely. "No."

"Uh-huh. You can do it next weekend, in our dorm. I'll study... or something." The girl turned to Jaune. "Whadd'ya say?"

The boy, who had already slumped against the wall the bed sat alongside and looked a breath away from sleep, opened his eyes in question. "Huh?"

"You. Hang out in our dorm. Maybe teach Weiss how to play video game...s. So I can study. Next weekend." She motioned her hands back and forth in explanation. "Then we can play whenever."

That would be a 'no', from Jaune.

"Sure."

Both parties were taken aback, and Weiss felt like this was going to go downhill. "Really?"

The boy shrugged, his speech slurring as he slumped into the wall again. "Yeah, I haven't got much on next weekend. Sounds... good."

So, it's a date.

...

Oh, dust. Was it a date?


	2. Chocolate and Frets

**/ - **A second chapter is here. A tad shorter than the first, but I tried to have more narrative than dialogue in this one, for Weiss' sake. I honestly wish I could write out ten-thousand word chapters of this stuff for you guys, but it tires me out too much for something like that, I have no idea how people do it. Regardless, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for the kind words on the previous chapter.

* * *

Weiss wasn't going to lie. She had, everyday for the past six days, thought about her and Jaune's (and Ruby's) little gathering atleast once. However, Weiss also wasn't going to clarify further, so the exact number of times she had thought about her and Jaune (and Ruby) over the past six days would not be established, because it was embarrassing, and the heiress was yet to shake the scars from last week. The stinging reminder of Yang's stupid little blackmail still remained, and the lingering memory of her... 'alternate universe' comment - which only stung more the more Weiss reflected upon it - refused to leave her. She hadn't been wholly serious at the time, _obviously_, it was simply an excuse; a small, offhanded comment that had come from having spoken before she had thought. Winter had warned her of the dangers of speaking before thinking, and Weiss was now very much familiar with them.

Though, she would be lying to herself if she said she hadn't thought of the matter of the comment. The idea of swapping places with a Weiss in a universe where Jaune was smitten with her made good daydream material, and it didn't hurt to indulge - in the prospect that things could be a lot easier - within the confines of her own, tangled mind. But, alas, daydreaming had only gotten the girl so far in the past week or so; it had taken her a distance that brought her closer to accepting her hormonally amorous ordeal, but no closer to Jaune himself. Which was somewhat of a disappointing of a result with how thoroughly she had daydreamt about it considered.

It was a brisk Saturday morning that RWBY's dormitory found itself suspended in a comfortable silence. Weiss, the one most appreciative of the silence, was sat up against a stack of pillows lined up along the headboard of her bottom-bunk bed. A worn notebook rested in her lap, though the textbook next to her sat closed and untouched as the heiress' mind was racing to and fro too much to facilitate any modicum of study. In her stupor, she hadn't taken account of what her teammates were up to, though she doubted there was much to guess; she presumed Ruby was lounging around with her scroll, Blake was reading another of her questionable paperbacks, and Yang...

"You excited for your little rendezvous, Weiss?"

Well, Yang was doing what she knew best. Being an inscrutable nuisance. "Be quiet, Yang."

The girl laughed, leaning against the dormitory door. "What? Are you concentrating on something, perhaps?" She whistled a noise of thought. "Just the two of you hanging around, all alone..."

Weiss steeled herself, gripping a corner of her notebook between her index finger and thumb. Since Yang had caught wind of the upcoming occasion - from Ruby, on the same night - she hadn't left Weiss alone. "Be quiet, Yang."

It continued. "No one to disturb you..."

The corner was ripped from the page. "Your sister's going to be there. It's not a date."

The blonde, kitbag in hand, smirked. "Oh, I know." She smiled mockingly. "The joys of young love."

Breaking the back and forth came Ruby, who, with scroll in hand, flopped down from her bunk. She protested against Weiss' dismissal. "Hey! I worked hard to get you that date, Weiss."

Weiss pouted at her partner in fury. "It is not a date. You are going to be there, which nullifies the date part. A date is two people."

Ruby's eyes gazed in thought. "Uh..." She perked up. "What about a double date? That isn't two people."

"That is two of two people who are dating."

Yang glanced at the upside down screen of Ruby's scroll, and recognised the levelled text blocks of blue and white. "Who're you talking to, Rubes?" She nodded at her scroll.

Ruby glanced at Yang. "Just Jaune."

The blonde contained a laugh, looking to Weiss. "Seems you've been beaten to it, Weiss."

The heiress glared ice at the idiot girl. "I could have sworn I told you to be quiet."

Yang continued, looking back to Ruby. "Has he mentioned their little date yet?"

Ruby returned to her top-bunk bed, returning to her relaxed form. "Nope."

Her sister laughed a laugh she couldn't contain this time, shooting Weiss a pitiful look. "Oh, Weiss."

"Oh, what?" She swallowed her haste, taking notice of Yang's bag. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?"

A flash of realisation passed her eyes as she swung her arm infront of her, examining the small, digital watch that sat upon her wrist. "Uh... yeah, actually." She heaved the kitbag over her shoulder and opened the door. "Thanks for the reminder. I'm off, see you later."

Weiss breathed an internal sigh of relief. "Have fun."

"See-ya, Yang."

The girl paused in the open door, looking at her partner. "Blake?"

The faunus waved a brief yet genuine gesture of goodbye, continuing to focus on her book. Her partner rolled her eyes and smiled, waving to her teammates, then walking out and closing the door behind her.

Weiss looked to Blake, who was lost in yet another one of her books, and didn't seem very intent on moving anytime soon. "I presume you have somewhere to be aswell?"

The faunus girl smiled. "Mhm, I'll head to the library once your date arrives."

Blake's jest infuriated the girl more than it should have, considering the only sensible person apart from Weiss had now jumped on the bandwagon aswell. "He's not my date."

The raven girl sighed a sound of mocking thoughtfulness, and turned a page in her book.

* * *

It was near midday now, and the clock on the wall had ticked by too many times to count. Weiss had gone from sitting idly with the thought of her need to study, to prancing about the small dormitory kitchen with the thought of her need to get it together. To say she was nervous would be an appropriate claim, and the dry of her mouth and the unrest of her heart had given rise to stress, which would explain the half-eaten bar of chocolate that hung from the grip of her right hand.

Her mind had refused to settle across the morning, and she now found herself scrambling for the simplest reassurances and comforts to ease her nerves. The sugar of the chocolate hadn't helped, _infact_, she was convinced it had actually made her situation worse by allowing her brain to fabricate more outcomes for the day per second. Anticipation was her enemy, and 'epicureanism' would be her ally. A very Weiss word.

This would be fine. There was nothing of concern, it was her, Jaune _and_ Ruby - it was a get-together.

And even if it wasn't a get-together and Jaune had interpreted it as a date, she looked fine. Her hair was fine, she had slept fine, her outfit was fine, her subtle makeup (which she refused to admit she had taken added care to because of the occasion) was fine.

Everything was fine. Fine, fine, fine.

It would be fine.

* * *

Jaune had arrived casually, which had settled Weiss' worry that it was a date, and dashed Weiss' hopes that it was a date. So she was... ambivalent... to the situation, really. He was wearing what she had expected - jeans, that Pumpkin Pete's hoodie which never left his wear, and socks, because he had insisted that shoes were of no use whilst in one's dormitory.

Well, he hadn't put it like that, obviously, it had been more of a 'socks are comfier'.

She wasn't complaining, per se, casual was good, it relieved pressure and meant Weiss could relax. Her earlier stress had now subsided and she found herself simply hoping for the best; it was just an informal event that demanded less attention than doing her hair in the morning, nothing of concern.

But, while Weiss was settled with the cicrumstance, her dreamscape wasn't, because this wasn't exactly what it had envisioned. Far from it.

"Right, so you know how to hold it?"

"Yes... yes." She spun the scroll around as she glanced at how Jaune's scroll sat in his hands.

"Alright. So you've got the movement pad on the left..."

Movement pad - more of a translucent ring. "Mhm."

"Left goes left, right goes right, up jumps, down ducks."

Left goes left, right goes right, up... "Mhm."

Jaune glanced at her with a cautious smirk on his face. She quickly returned it with a reassuring smile. He nodded. "You've got the buttons on the right. Left button does a light attack, right button does a charged attack - which does stun damage but is slower. You have to build up stun damage to actually stun your opponent, it doesn't stun with just one hit."

Buttons. Stun. "Mhm." She nodded slowly.

He paused for a moment. "Oh, and the direction of the movement pad controls the direction of your attack."

Right.

"And different button combos perform different movesets."

Right.

"Oh! And you stack combo from attacking repeatedly, and not getting interrupted. If you get the stack high enough, you can proc a pretty strong attack through a charged attack."

Right.

"Ready?"

Weiss' eyes lost their confused daze, and she looked up from the controls on her scroll. "Yes! Yes, I'm ready."

For her first 'date', Weiss, in her dreamscape long before Beacon, hadn't envisioned sitting on a set of cushions and pillows infront of a television, being taught how to play a video game for the sake of her partner who was sat 'studying' in the background. Though, when she had first come to Beacon, and first met Jaune, she hadn't envisioned being inconveniently smitten with the boy, and him being the one sat with her. So envisionments had come to be of little value to the heiress as time went on, and she instead came to tolerate the intangible reverie of her time at Beacon.

But, once Ruby was removed from thought, it really was just them, with no one to disturb them. She would try her hardest to learn the game, they'd laugh and indulge in repartee, they'd grow closer, and maybe he'd put his arms around her and show her how to do a certain mo-

"Okay! Game's started." The boy moved the movement pad back and forth quickly in habit, his character performing a peculiar dance on the screen. "I guess you can try to hit me, first."

Weiss' dreamscape shattered in motion, and she returned to reality. She scoffed. "What do you mean, 'try'?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you played a single game that uses a controller in your life, Weiss?"

"No."

He smirked at her. Okay, very funny Arc, but it was Weiss who would have the last laugh. She would not be stumped by a trivial little game.

She threw the movement sensor upwards in her confidence, and tapped the left button twice (for good measure), and in under three seconds, one of the most glorious displays of combat prowess Weiss had witnessed unfolded on the television. Her character was launched into the air with a frontflip, she peaked in the air as she rolled forward once more, building momentum, and her legs span round into the move. She hurtled down almost immediately, cracking down the heel of an extended leg directly into the head of Jaune's dancing character, who froze in injury. The leg settled there for a moment as Weiss' character fell backwards towards the ground. She caught herself with both arms behind her back, planted on the floor, and thrust the suspended leg down, throwing Jaune's character downwards and from his feet, crushing his head into the ground. The surface shattered with ceremonious shards of concrete, and Weiss' character jumped up into a pointing taunt, laughing an 8-bit sound of mockery as her opponent clambered from his humiliation.

Jaune sat still for a moment, the scroll in his hands rendered inactive. He hadn't expected something quite like that from the Schnee heiress, he was expecting more of an unceremonious jump, then maybe an out-of-range attempt at a jab. Not... that.

"Alright." The boy sat up, planting his fingers against the scroll's controls. "I think you've got the hang of this." His character darted across the screen, and pursued Weiss' now fleeing character.

"No!" The shock of her triumph escaped her, and faded into a rushing sense of fear. Weiss clamped the scroll in her hand and scattered the movement sensor around to escape Jaune, laughing in her panic. "Please! That was by accident, I don't know how to play this game!"

* * *

Weiss had suffered crushing defeat, a crippling strategic loss. She had humiliated herself, and not even managed to pull through on a single of the five matches they had played. The closest she had gotten was with an abuse of the game's mechanics in which she stun-locked Jaune's character with an unorthodox method - landing charged attacks until the stun threshold was filled, hit with another charged attack to stun, then stand next to the stunned opponent and jump. This would cancel the stun animation, yet keep the stun threshold full, so the following charged attack would stun again, and cause damage. Simply rinse and repeat until you win. She had found the method by pure chance, of course, but it was somewhat of a triumph none the less.

Unfortunately, Weiss eventually missed a jump, and Jaune was able to land a light attack, ending her reign.

"You won every single one." She muttered, the golden glow of 'PLAYER ONE VICTORY' still ingrained in her eyes.

Jaune only shrugged, humming in reassurance. "Yeah, but I've played this game plenty." He relinquished his scroll and reached for another chocolate in the box that was now positioned infront of the two, placed there after match three by Weiss' demand. "You've played for..." He glanced at the clock, unwrapping the chocolate. "...an hour and a bit."

She thought to how she probably looked to him. "Well, I could have atleast shown I was improving."

The boy held his chocolate in the air, not yet opting to eat it. He looked at her in amusement. "You worry too much, sometimes." He shrugged again. "I thought it was a lot of fun."

Fun... Yes! Of course it was... of course it was. Weiss hadn't felt this much adrenaline through her veins since... well, since she lost her mind at Ruby on day one for her pitiful spatial awareness in the presence of sensitive dust caches. It had been a lot of fun, actually, and the hour they had spent dueling and laughing had gone by without farewell. She had... enjoyed herself.

And she hoped, so had he.

Hoisting up the box of wrapped chocolates, Jaune offered one to Weiss. "You want another one?"

She glanced at the withering pile of sweet-treats, and the growing pile of empty wrapper that was scattered around inside. "Are there any more coconut ones?"

Jaune peered at the remaining chocolates, tonguing a remnant of caramel that had become stuck in his teeth. "Uh..." He noticed a bouncing, untouched blue wrapper. "Yeah, just one, I think."

Weiss smiled, reaching for the coconut treat that lay by itself, positioned there by Jaune's manuevering of the box. "Thank you."

They sat in silence for a moment, with Jaune indulging in golden caramel and Weiss indulging in white coconut.

And Ruby. Well, Ruby...

"So, can I play now?"

Weiss turned around. "You're supposed to be studying, Ruby."

The girl slumped. "I have. I've done..." She glanced at her textbook. "Grimm migration patterns." She groaned the words in boredom.

Weiss looked to Jaune. "We're babysitting a teenager."

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever babysat?"

She made a look of lax dismissal. "No. But I presume it's horrible."

The boy chuckled and nodded. "Stressful, maybe. But it isn't _horrible._"

"So... when's it my go?" The rose spoke up again.

Weiss sighed, ignoring the girl. "And you're enjoying this?"

Jaune answered the question with a smirk and a look of pity. Ruby's insistence looked like it was about to crash Weiss' party.

In the silence, she looked at him with an inadvertent look of tempered sorrow, and she presumed he saw it in her eyes, given the grow of a wistful smile on his face as he looked back at her. The hour had changed things, and the air felt different and had unnaturally grown tense, with the incorporeal bond between the two - which was once juvenile and unnurtured, which had existed only from the glances of an heiress and the off-topic conversations of the Arc boy - had accelerated to something tender. When she looked back into his ocean eyes, she swore she could see a glow of what she could only refer to as... admiration. These turn of events didn't make the doubtful sense she was used to, and it made her stomach flip.

It was only typical that Ruby was here to sour the moment, and she could feel the tempered sorrow in her eyes reflecting back as a plea of stay in her mind. If she was in an alternate-universe, it would just be the two of them, and he would stay with her for longer. She would have a date.

The moment lasted only a second, and it soon broke. Jaune looked away, scratching the back of his head, and addressed the both of them. "Uh, Pyrrha organised some sparring today, just earlier. So I ought to go." He grabbed his scroll and stood up. "I'll see you guys later."

Weiss nodded, relaxing her posture. "Right." She smiled. "See you later."

Ruby beamed, hopping from her bed. "Bye, Jaune."

The boy nodded, walking for the door, opening it, then leaving, and closing it behind him.

Before Weiss could say anything to Ruby, the door opened again, and that half-confident, half-lost boyish face of his peered around it. "Oh, Weiss..."

"Mhm?"

"Do we have Port homework? For Monday?"

She sighed. "No, Jaune."

He smiled, giving a thumbs-up. "Thanks." And with that, the door closed once more, seemingly for good.

Weiss looked at Ruby, who had somehow ended up on the row of cushions next to Weiss, and was now peering through her. "What?"

Ruby shrugged. "Nothing." She took out her own scroll, waving it at Weiss with a grin.

The heiress frowned, and picked up her own. It would only be courtesy. "Fine. One match. That's it."


End file.
